"A
Remembrance of the Past; Building for the Future." ~ Eve
Eckert Koehler

Remembering Our Danube Swabian Ancestors

The Settlement of
Swabian Turkey

by
Josef Hoben

Translated
by Henry Fischer

a) Slavic
Settlements

The
Imperial-Royal Repopulation Patent of
1689 indicated that, "in the totally
ruined and depopulated Kingdom of
Hungary...everyone, regardless of
status, nationality or religion, whether
from within or outside the country, from
the cities or countryside who are free
citizens and loyal subjects," were free
to come and settle.

The
settlers--even during the Turkish
period--were Slavic. That was
especially true of those in the Tolna as
well as its neighbouring Counties, that
thrust the remaining Magyar population
to the north. The Slavs (Croats, Serbs
and members of other Slavic groups), who
were also called Raizen, took on the
unfamiliar work of the redevelopment of
the land for which they had no
experience. For example, according to
the parish chronicle of Szakadát, prior
to the German settlement of the village
in 1759, it was inhabited by Orthodox
Serbs. To be sure, the Raizen were not
that well established at the time.
Their participation in the redevelopment
of the area was relatively negligible.

The Slavs, in
comparison with the resident Magyars,
were not looked upon as peasant farmers
but as cotters. They did not receive an
allotment of a full or half portion of
arable land from the Estate owners but
rather a quarter if any at all. But
they had the right of migration unlike
the Magyars. Migration was permissible
on paying a tax that allowed them to do
so. They carried out extensive cattle
rearing and moved around the countryside
with their herds and in addition did
some agricultural work as day
labourers. There is no way that we can
consider such a limited view and outlook
of the nomadic Slavs as comparable with
the agricultural development and
settlement of the land. On the basis of
their settlements they were not of the
structure or order of the former
villages in the area that were destroyed
during the disastrous wars that had
engulfed the land.

For that reason,
even though these Slavic settlements
existed, German peasant farmers were
invited to come and settle. Through
their settlement the village boundaries
were extended and what had been open
pasture lands for the Slavs were divided
up taking away their means of
livelihood. The Slavs lost more and
more of their pasture lands and had to
move on to other areas with their
cattle.

b) German
Settlements

The underlying
basis for the resettlement of Hungary as
indicated in the Repopulation Patent of
1689 soon became known throughout the
Holy Roman Empire.

The indigenous
population, the Emperor's subjects in
the Austrian hereditary lands, were
promised three years of exemption from
paying taxes, while those from outside
the direct jurisdiction of the Habsburgs
were promised five years because of the
major costs they would have to bear to
be transported there. This meant: all
of those German subjects of the Empire
who were willing to emigrate and settle
on the State-owned domains in the Banat
or on the private estates of the nobles
would be exempt from paying taxes or any
other levies for five years. Early in
the 1690s the first Germans emigrated to
Hungary. An example of this early phase
of the settlement of the Germans is in
the village of Keszӧhidegkút in Tolna
County taking place in 1702. These
first emigrants came from Hessen and
Bavaria but also from Fulda, Würzburg,
the Palatinate and Alsace.

The first
settlement operations occurred very much
at random and were not of a planned or
systematic nature. They were simply by
chance or due to opportunities that
presented themselves at the moment that
led to the settlement of German
colonists in Hungarian villages. Of
prime importance for their decision to
emigrate was the prospect of being freed
from the feudal obligations and levies
paid to their noble and the promise of
free land and a building lot for a
house. Nevertheless during this early
settlement period there was little in
the way of positive results because up
until 1711, the ambushes, raids and
attacks by the Hungarian Kuruz rebels
flared up constantly and the
newly-founded former villages were
destroyed and went up in flames. In the
immediate period which followed the
nobles owning private estates were more
determined than ever to bring German
settlers to Hungary with the full
support of the Emperor. In 1712,
Ladislaus Dóry de Jóbaháza, the owner of
the Domain and estate of Tevel and its
environs, was appointed an Agent of the
Crown to provide direction and lead the
way in bringing Germans to develop the
devastated wastelands of Hungary. Franz
Felbinger was Dóry's agent in Germany,
and was stationed in Biberach in Upper
Swabia, where he functioned as his
authorized recruiter. In the meanwhile,
in early 1712, the Roman Catholic nobles
in the Swabian Districts received a
request from Emperor Charles VI to grant
their subjects permission to emigrate
and shortly afterwards Felbinger had the
first handbills printed in Riedlingen
(Württemberg) with all kinds of promises
that would appeal to the peasants that
were circulated throughout all of
southern Germany.

The settlement
of emigrants from the south-western
principalities of Germany was carried
out on the basis of the recruitment of
those eager and willing to go, while
large numbers of colonists from the
Austrian Alpine region were forced to go
or were being punished with
deportation: "Undesirable elements" in
the hereditary lands were dumped in the
south-eastern regions of Hungary and
criminal elements were deported to the
Banat. Rather famous and notorious was
the "Temesvar Wasserschub" (a ship that
the police used to transport prisoners)
that was in operation in Vienna twice a
year in May and October in the years
between 1752 and 1768 that was loaded
with undesirable persons that had been
assembled by the police. They were
chiefly vagrants, smugglers, "work-shy"
elements in the population and women
with "loose morals" and were shipped to
Temesvár in the Banat. Of course they
did not settle there but got back to
Vienna at the first opportunity.